Author Topic: Australia.....  (Read 2449 times)

Offline JoMal

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Australia.....
« on: February 26, 2007, 12:52:49 PM »
Reviews of my Australian trip -

Queensland probably was the best part of the trip. We took a livaboard dive boat out to the Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea for five days and four nights, diving five times the first two days, then four, then two dives on the morning of our return to Cooktown, from which we caught a low-flying plane back to Cairns, where the dive trip originated.

Many of the dives were done around "Bommies" - pinnacles that jut up from the ocean floor from forty to eighty feet or more, but don't break the surface, ending roughly five to ten feet below the breaking waves.
On the dives, you circle the bommie, the direction depending on which way the current is going.

Since the boat cannot anchor over the bommie, they either tell you to follow the buoy rope to the bommie by dragging yourself against the current about twenty meters to its location, or they drag you there behind a tender through the surf, at which point you let go and hope they put you within underwater sight of the bommie. I tried this method twice unsuccessfully (and several times when it worked). When it does not work, it means you are dropped into the blue of the Coral Sea and from about twenty feet under the water, where you are completely lost as to where the bommie lies, because visability is no more then forty feet. This is NOT a comfortable feeling. This happens when the current is strong enough to push your compass reading a bit off course, meaning you are unable to reestablish your location in reference to the bommie. Your only choice at that point is to surface and signal the dive boat that you are not over the bommie and for them to come get you and try again.

Dive sights themselves. The reefs and bommies have quite a few reef sharks. These are commonly white tips and black tips. The white tips can get large - over 12 feet - but most fell into the four to seven foot range. The smaller ones don't bother you much; out of curiousity they may make a circle and then just ignore you. The one time my wife and I were in about 80 feet and a bit away from everyone else, the 12 footer swam by. This was a bit less comforting, in that the bigger sharks tend to follow you, and more closely. We reestablished contact with the group and hoped larger numbers would make him go elsewhere, which is what he eventually did.

Some other interesting critters were the sea snakes - highly venomous (like in deadly with no chance of survival if biten), but also very curious and oddly friendly. They swim around you and between the divers, your legs, and even get kicked once in a while. But they do not see divers as food, so do not care. Even if one bit you, then often do not inject venom (it is their perogative to do so). Lime green in color and up to ten feet long.

The reef Stonefish - If you can even find one, let alone see one, you are very persceptive. They are practically invisible because they look just like part of the reef, they blend in so well. But this perfect disguise apparently was not enough for evolution. The stonefish is the most deadly fish in the world. It has thirteen stout spines in the dorsal fin which can inject a highly toxic venom. The venom causes intense pain and is believed to have killed many Pacific and Indian Ocean islanders. An antivenom now exists, but the sting causes intense pain and treatment is necessary. We managed to see two on one bommie, but only because its mouth moved. This fish is a good reminder why it is not a good idea to tough anything you don't know on dives.

Common lionfish - This species has extremely venomous dorsal fin spines. When disturbed by a diver it often makes little effort to swim away. Instead it points its dorsal fin spines towards the intruder. The Common Lionfish has very long pectoral and dorsal fins. The body is covered with red to black bands on a pale background. Adults often have white spots along the lateral line. In other words, when you see one for the first time, you tend to go "Yikes!!". About 8 to 12 inches long, it looks like the head of a lion, only much more colorful and feathery. There are over one hundred types around Australia, but the only other one that we saw was the leaf scorpionfish (looks like a floating leaf at first) and the stonefish (see above). All are venomous to various degrees.

Triggerfish - these are large reef fish that can grow up to a foot long. It is dark green, brown or greyish with diagonal orange to yellow lines on the body. They build nests on the reef and what makes them interesting (and by far the most annoying critters we ran into) is that they aggressively defend these nests from all comers, including divers. If you swim over a nest, the triggerfish comes after you with very sharp teeth attached to very powerful jaws, though thankfully a smallish mouth. I had to defend myself from one on the very first dive we took. I managed to make it go away, only for it to bite the fin of another diver hard enough to pull her leg down. Fortunately, no one actually got bitten, but we heard stories of divers who had. They can take a whole chunk out of your arm or leg.
   
Some other fish we regularly saw: Giant Trevally, foxface, porcupine fish, pufferfish, pipefish (sort of looks like a seahorse), nudibranch, pineapple fish, potatoe cod (these can grow up to 6 and a half feet long and we saw several in the five foot range), unicorn fish, moorish idol.

There also was one that I have forgotten the name of, but was extremely interesting. It fitted itself inside a deep crevice of the bommie, so only its mouth faced out. Its mouth had (and I am not kidding) electrical currents running vertically inside the lips, so it appeared like it was emitting lightening strikes every few seconds. The rest of the interior of the mouth was a translucent red that looked as alien as you could imagine. Have to remember the name of it. Think it was something like fire fish, but that is incorrect.

My worse encounters diving - ran into some fire coral going through an opening in a reef. My right forarm took the brunt and it flared up like poison ivy for three weeks. It has since faded. Stingers, what we call jellyfish. Tis the season for them downunder when we were there and many beaches had to be netted off to protect the bathers. Not so bad out on the reef, but I got stung enough to force me to wear my skin, which I prefer not to bother with when diving. The boat itself was most dangerous, especially getting back on board. The surf tends to bang you into the side of the boat, or the stairs you climb to get out of the water. Waiting your turn as someone ahead of you pauses on the ladder to unbuckle something is the worse because you just get the hell dinged out of you then.

This is running too long, so if anyone is really interested on our land adventures, and we had considerably more of those then the five diving days, let me know specifics about what you would like to know.
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.....We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.....We are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular....We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

Offline Reality

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Re: Australia.....
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2007, 01:44:53 PM »
beer:  quality and mug size
wine:  quality

Racial mixture.  Is Aust now global?

Offline JoMal

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Re: Australia.....
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2007, 02:19:33 PM »
beer:  quality and mug size
wine:  quality

Beer - Standard pint, though some places offered liters. Pubs were plentiful and very English/Irish in configuration in the large cities, many located in 100 to 150 year old buildings. These older buildings mostly had kept the piss trough that runs under the bar, probably as a novelty from another era - very classy idea until they started to allow women into the pubs in recent decades.

As for the beer, not as good as English - in fact, the best beer I had was Guiness and Abbot's Ale, thought Toohey's OLD was decent, and Cascade Premium - brewed in Tasmania, was a good lager. The wife loved to have Victorian Bitter, which was very common, at just about every meal. I liked it okay, but not as much as she did. Oh, yeah, I did like James Squire Amber and Fourex in Queensland. The XXXX was quite nice.

Piss and Piss Weak were, um, unintentionally Freudian. They left me dry, but looking for that trough.

BTW, not sure why, but Fosters was practically nonexistant in the pubs. I don't even remember seeing it anywhere.

Pubs in the Outback were particularly nondiscript and ugly, which fit the citizenry very well as well, whomever you might meet out there. There are some Aussies in the Outback who are, well...anyone remember the movie Deliverance? These people would STRIVE to evolve as far as those people have, if they could possibly even think about anything that complex.

We drank considerable wine and spent two days (overnight) in the Hunter's Valley wine region, which is two hours north of Sydney, and again on a bus tour out of Melbourne we visited a winery. Plus we had glasses of wine with dinner often. In general, the very best Australian wines were the Cabernet Sauvegnon/Merlot blends, and the higher quality Shiraz'. The climate in general is not that condusive to producing quality grapes. When I heard that some of the best grapes are grown in isolated valleys inland, (such as in Orange) from where the wine is actually distilled, I had to ask how they transport the grapes to the winery quickly without losing too much sugar after picking, or did they process the grapes on site.

I was shocked to hear that they don't!

They truck the grapes from the fields for hours to where the processing takes place, instead of processing right after picking, when the quality (acidity and sugar content) were maximized. The cost of building processing plants in these regions apparently is high enough to warrant the trucking option instead. Some of these grape growing regions are TWO DAYS from the winery processing plants. Plus, from what I observed, the wine regions are dry and harsh. While grape plants often prefer to be stressed out (this tends to produce a more intense grape and better wine), at some point the soil and weather play a part in what quality of wine you will get. To their credit, the Australian wine makers are skilled. The Cab/Merlot blends (that is how they are referred to) are highly drinkable, and since the Shiraz grape originated in arid Arabian regions, it adapted well to Australia.

But generally, Californian wines are superior.
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.....We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.....We are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular....We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

Offline JoMal

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Re: Australia.....
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2007, 02:30:56 PM »
Quote
Racial mixture.  Is Aust now global?

Now this is a most interesting question. Yes, Australia has become more global.

Along with considerable Chinese immigration, other Southeast Asian immigration appears high. Many New Zealanders have moved to Australia - it seemed many of the people we talked to, and boy, did we meet a ton of people while there, had immigrated over from New Zealand. European countries were well-represented as well. These things were particularly noticable in the big cities, where different ethnic restaurants seemed to dominate the culinary landscape.

We were in Melbourne during the Chinese New Year Celebration and in fact our hotel was in ChinaTown. The Chinese food was far superior to anything I have eaten in San Francisco, which has started to "Anglo-down" the food quality in its ChinaTown. This clearly is not the case in Melbourne, where Chinese food rocks!

Australia has started to make amends to the Aborigine native population, which it had sorely hurt in the early days of colonization. Much is being done to retain their culture and retain the Aboriginal names for regions and rivers and such. Museums stress their arts, crafts, and beliefs strongly. In general, Aborigines have blended into society well, and we met some at one of those "Aboriginal" shows at a wildlife park, where they perform native dances, demonstrate throwing boomerangs (and teach you how to throw them - I was good!!!), and throwing spears (they developed a sling that shoots their thin spears 100 yards away and accurately- amazing!!). They tend to be funny, well-spoken, and very proud of their heritage.

On the down side, I heard many, many complaints about an open-door policy by the Australian government regarding undesirable foreigners being let into the country because of hardships in their native lands. These tend to be Arab or Muslim immigrants, and they are not looked upon with undiluted joy by Australians of any other background
« Last Edit: February 26, 2007, 02:33:15 PM by JoMal »
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.....We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.....We are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular....We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."